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Babel is used by millions, so why are we running out of money?

babeljs.io

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Re: Babel is used by millions, so why are we running out of money?

#601

Post by noahtallen »

capableweb wrote: post #309
FiberBundle wrote: post #300

This whole thread is basically a testament as to why the OSS model, unfortunately, is broken. Very competent people are expected to write widely used software for a salary that basically merely guarantees subsistence. It never ceases to amaze me how great software engineers allow themselves to be exploited in such a way. If you consider the societal impact that some of these projects have and the skill set that some…

> This whole thread is basically a testament as to why the OSS model, unfortunately, is broken This blog post for me is evidence that we can make crowdfunded open source work, as long as the people receiving the money know how to effectively use it. The team handling the economy of Babel right now, does not, hence Babel is not sustainable. But, if you'd make the salaries a bit more realistic, Babel would have money o…

I mean, it’s also important to recognize that the average salary most people in the US gets paid does not include benefits. Let’s say the salary for a senior engineer is $100k. (This is super low in reality, especially in the tech world. Maybe not when including other types of companies.) Let’s say the typical cost of benefits is 30%. That works out to $130k total. That’s around $10.8k a month. And remember, this is the low end.

In the blog post, they said they’re going to have each person make $6k per month (excluding benefits). Subtracting 30% for benefits, it works out to $50k a year base salary. For software developers in the US, that’s a pittance at any level.

No, OSS devs shouldn’t be forced to take that little to work on important projects like Babel. If we want talented devs working in a certain area, we need to make it financially attractive.

Re: Babel is used by millions, so why are we running out of money?

#602

Post by bjornjajeja »

rhacker wrote: post #492
bjornjajeja wrote: post #455

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Honestly the very idea of a JavaScript compiler like that is destined for obsolescence per standardized features added to browsers. Folks should just develop their own shims where necessary and TEST AGAINST VARIOUS BROWSERS. Sure no one likes doing that, but it’s important to follow the fast-pace ECMAScript adoption.

> TEST AGAINST VARIOUS BROWSERS I mean, how does that not just push all of this towards companies and open source solutions that provide access to old browsers and what not? I mean no matter what direction you push, it's going to be someone else's open source code that needs money.

You’re right that was an off topic note.

I guess what I’m getting at is that most current browsers support very nice JavaScript features anyway. And instead of adding yet another layer between our code and the browser—embrace the current generation of (at this point very robust) language features available.

And if that’s not good enough use something like TypeScript!

Re: Babel is used by millions, so why are we running out of money?

#603

Post by mLuby »

Pet_Ant wrote: post #527
creshal wrote: post #197

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> JetBrains asks for $500 per year For IntelliJ; their other tools are $200 a year. And I suspect the average enterprise Java engineer has more discretionary spending than a random JS fullstack devsecops person.

> suspect the average enterprise Java engineer has more discretionary spending Engineers get discretionary spending? I haven't ever had a dollar discretionary. My last job paid for an ergo mouse for me (Logitech Vertical) at hire time and I was so ecstatic at the park and got myself a jumbo mousepad to go with it. Is there a norm I'm not aware of?

Same, though I've heard of expensing software or business books, and of course conferences.

Re: Babel is used by millions, so why are we running out of money?

#604

Post by WORMS_EAT_WORMS »

cj wrote: post #595
WORMS_EAT_WORMS wrote: post #507

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wow, that’s amazing. Right on regarding empathy and age/experience. No one is really an awful person. Just petty drama...

Mismanaging hundreds of thousands of dollars of charitable contributions goes a bit beyond petty drama in my opinion.

Ha, love the 10/10 spin there.

- A joint decision was made how to split and pay maintainers.

- A disagreement about performance / results has come from that.

- Tweeting to rally the homies is immature (and quite embarrassing) way of solving a problem.

I am not saying funds could not be reallocated differently. I’m saying the people involved with this are acting unprofessional / like children.

Re: Babel is used by millions, so why are we running out of money?

#605

Post by abxytg »

meowtimemania wrote: post #575
cuu508 wrote: post #551

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Jesus. Maybe I am old-school, but if you have a disagreement or someone isn't holding themselves to a standard, you don't take it to Twitter to signal to in-crowd. Not saying I disagree, but, in your words, what's bad with taking it to Twitter?

Taking it to Twitter makes the criticizing person look super toxic. I think reputation can be saved by doing this privately

Personally, I think Seb burnt his own rep and the rep of Rome tools, and unfortunately it reflects really really poorly on his cofounder as well.

Re: Babel is used by millions, so why are we running out of money?

#606

Post by ForHackernews »

thrower123 wrote: post #596
ForHackernews wrote: post #301

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Just license your software under the GPL, then corporations can't take and use it without contributing back. It's hard for me to feel sympathetic for people who deliberately sign up for a model that encourages free-riding and then complain about it.

What exactly would the benefit of licencing a tool like Babel under GPL be? It would be completely moot. Using a GPL transpiler isn't going to confer GPL virally onto the code that you run through it.

It would mean big greedy companies with skittish legal departments would be forbidden from using it without paying for a commercial license.

Re: Babel is used by millions, so why are we running out of money?

#607

Post by mottosso »

dharmaturtle wrote: post #598
akmittal wrote: post #105

See what creator of Babel has to say >Babel used by millions, so why are we running out of money? Bluntly: Because funds were misallocated for years, and the project has been too slow to improve. >The reason there's no money is because someone took a $130k annual salary and didn't actually work on the project. https://twitter.com/sebmck/status/1392019586833387522 - So donating money because of this post may not be a…

Screenshot of deleted tweet: https://i.imgur.com/ai6ntjt.png

Screenshot of the above message: https://user-images.githubusercontent.com/2152766/117868229-... ;D

Re: Babel is used by millions, so why are we running out of money?

#608

Post by shkkmo »

ianbutler wrote: post #469
ThalesX wrote: post #461

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm on the other side of the boat, and presumably the ocean. In Eastern Europe, part of the EU and have a lot of connections working in outsourcing. Some senior level engineers can end up making 4000 - 5000€ per month, which would translate to ~$65.000 per year. I know of very few that make 6000€ or more. Giving the benefit of the doubt and saying that any engineer here will be half the value of one from SV (which, I…

That's valid too, but and big but, I'd argue your engineers aren't being paid their value though and that's largely down to what I feel is Europe not valuing engineers relative to what they accomplish enough. Don't drive our wages down, drive yours up. I'm consistently astounded that my friend who lives in France is only making what she makes given her level of schooling and skill. That doesn't detract from your poin…

An open source project funded by donations is not the vehicle to use to try to hike developer wages. Especially when that project is already underfunded.

The concerns about the project not making efficient use of the donations it recieves seem spot on.

Re: Babel is used by millions, so why are we running out of money?

#609

Post by HWR_14 »

oneepic wrote: post #478
tarruda wrote: post #429

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> In the meantime, Sebastian has started another competing project, Rome Tools, which was recently VC funded. > The whole thing stinks. Will Rome Tools employees get called out and shamed in public if they don't have enough visibility on their github profile? I had no idea he had started a competing project. This really stinks, almost like he is sabotaging his competitor.

If I: - built Project A - left Project A and started the competitor Project B - contributed a lot of PRs to Project B each week, and - saw that a guy in a similar role at Project A, has relatively few weekly contributions to Project A My eyebrows would be a little raised. Not that I would call them out in a tweet, but I would at least be curious where that guy is spending his time.

Why? Once Project A gets to feature complete, does it need to be worked on at anywhere near the same rate? Other than fixing bugs/upgrading because of APIs they are using upgrading, the number of commits should be really small. Or should people change CSS constantly to have a string of useless PRs?

At that point, a huge amount of someone's time is spent managing bug tickets, attempting to isolate debug, etc.

Re: Babel is used by millions, so why are we running out of money?

#610

Post by rat9988 »

bjornjajeja wrote: post #600
krainboltgreene wrote: post #576

Earlier quoted context omitted.

babel is a transpiler, which is more than just a way to shim shim features in browsers.

You might call it a tanspiler and technically it IS. But the Babel homepage calls it a compiler. In any case, for the plethora of down voters: Babel states: “Use next generation JavaScript, today” At some point next gen == current gen, and therefor given enough stability, Babel becomes obsolete. Folks, donate to Mozilla instead they actually move things forward not backward.

This assumes that javascript has stopped evolving at some point.
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